Should we move on from the term "race"?

Gold Member

There's an interestong thread in the women's section about black women dating white men, and reading it as a European, I am finding the use of the term "race" confusing.

I know there are some smart biologists and maybe even anthropologists on the site, so this isn't a political correctness question, it is scientific correctness question.

As someone who is amateurishly interested in genetics, my view is that it is a fairly meaningless term and certainly incorrectly applied. I have a problem with its blanket use not only because the genetic differences are miniscule when compared to the similarities, but also because you would still call someone like CBabe from the black race when that is the minority of her genetic inheritance. This suggests that in some countries it has become a social tool of disintegration and is therefore racist.

They will exist, but at some stage they may come to see that their views are based on something that is a misconception of 19thC science/culture. And if we all continue to use it inappropriately we keep it in our culture.

They will exist, but at some stage they may come to see that their views are based on something that is a misconception of 19thC science/culture. And if we all continue to use it inappropriately we keep it in our culture.

I'm certainly no scientist, but I've also heard that the genetic variations within "races" are as significant as those between them, which undermines completely the idea of hermetic racial categories. But ideas don't have to coherent to be powerful - it seems racial categories are still "common sense" to most of us.

So how to talk about race and deal with the very real imact it has on life chances without reifying it as a category? Part of the soultion was to talk about a more polite and ethnicity and ethinic identity or more recently even "cultural difference".

In my view, there is definitely a new kind of racism which isn't so visible. Firstly, it claims that the extent of racism is exaggerated. Secondly, it defines groups not as biological types but as homogenous "cultural communities". Thirdly, it denies that hostility to other groups is necessarily discriminatory and instead talks about "cultural incompatibility". It bases its arguments on polite "difference" rather than outright superiority. Statements of discrimination are now coded as cultural difference. Think how no one bats and eyelid when people say, "Muslims are...".

Paul Gilroy isn't a scientist either, but he is a kickass writer (There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack):

"Creativeand negative thinking is needed to generate more complex and challenging narratives which can repudiate simple racial truthsand be faithful to everyday metropolitan life by reducing difference to a liberating ordinary-ness. From this angle, race is nothing special, a virtual reality given meaning only by the fact that racism endures."

Anybody who has been to a busy public venue in a big city recently knows there is no more such compartmentalization as "race." Sure, there's still some old "white" people like me [Heinz 57 U.S. mongrel dog of European extraction] but most people are now mixed. And I say we are better for it. Because now we can quit talking about this shite. And just start talking about people already.

Gold Member

The term "race" is a social construct to categorize people who physically look similar into group - it's a judgement call. A more objective categorization would be to divide people into their ethnicity or cultural differences.

I mean do Norweigians really look like North Africans? They are considered the same race however, pretty arbitrary where that line is drawn.

A more objective categorization would be to divide people into their ethnicity or cultural differences.

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No way! Cultural difference divisions are just another set of categorisations that are equally as arbitrary as "race". We've gone from thinking races were sealed, homogenous, real categories to thinking of cultures in the same way. Let's not make the same mistake again....

If you start going down the road of stopping people from using words to describe the real world then you end up with situations like the one I read about in my local paper where people where not allowed to ask for black or white coffee at a council meeting because it was 'racist'.
You have to ask the political correctness advocates what exactly they are affraid of when they try to stop people from using words which have been in use for thousands of years.

Gold Member

If you start going down the road of stopping people from using words to describe the real world then you end up with situations like the one I read about in my local paper where people where not allowed to ask for black or white coffee at a council meeting because it was 'racist'.
You have to ask the political correctness advocates what exactly they are affraid of when they try to stop people from using words which have been in use for thousands of years.

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D'uh

You want milk or not?

And Lol, white coffee wouldn't have much coffee in it, and black has no milk - QEFD.

This isn't about PC, it's about BS.

PS, the "race" BS is the antithesis of the coffee BS - one drop of milk and it is white, one drop of black.........

One thing I find strange and backward is all the statistics or demographic information that is collected. In college textbooks I've used recently it would say race is a construct. Race is more about culture or nationality than skin color. But then throughout the book they give statistics divided by "racial" categories. Well if there's really no race, then why is that there?
Same with the government. How are we going to move beyond "race" if every document you fill out has check boxes for the same?

I think it will wash out on its own after a few generations. Whenever things are changing there's always corresponding factors working against changes. Kind of like Newton's law: equal and opposite reaction even to needed and desirable changes.